Technology For Development (T4D) Officer (NO-2), Bridgetown, Barbados #121093 (Open to Nationals of Barbados)

Contract

This is a NO-2 contract. This kind of contract is known as National Professional Officers. It is normally only for nationals. It's a staff contract. More about NO-2 contracts.

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child, innovation

How can you make a difference?

Temporary Appointment Duration:

364 Days

Background

UNICEF promotes the rights and welfare of all children and adolescents in everything we do. Together with our allies, we work in 190 countries and territories to transform this commitment into practical actions that benefit all children, especially focusing our efforts on reaching the most vulnerable and excluded, worldwide.

The UNICEF Eastern Caribbean Regional Office is based in Barbados and cover 12 countries/ territories in the region.

UNICEF works to put the rights and well-being of the most disadvantaged children at the heart of the social, political, and economic agenda, in line with our equity focus, working across our organization and with our partners in government, civil society and the private sector to support shifts in public policy, fuel social engagement, and increase investment for children.

Innovation and Technology for Development (T4D) and are recognized as key enablers to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and are a key change-strategy identified by UNICEF in the new Strategic Plan.

UNICEF’s Innovation global strategy promotes creating opportunities for the world's children by focusing on where new markets can meet their vital needs, by:

• Connecting youth communities (or more broadly -- anyone disconnected or under-served) to decision-makers, and to each other, to deliver informed, relevant and sustained programmes that build better, stronger futures for children through our youth engagement programme.
• Provoking change for children through an entrepreneurial approach - in a traditionally risk-averse field -- to harness rapidly moving innovations and apply them to serve the needs of all children.
• Creating new models of partnership that leverage core business values across the public, private and academic sectors in order to deliver fast, and lasting results for children. The context of the Eastern Caribbean demands for equipping the country office to be strategic and smart with improved knowledge management, partnerships and policies in its work with technology. Leveraging technology is becoming an ever more important strategy for achieving sustainable development targets and outcomes.

The multi-country programme has launched key innovations including the Giga initiative and will continue to expand the digitization of the education sectors and will model, pilot and evaluate new initiatives that enhance learning and skills development, collaborating with information and communications technology providers and the private sector. Other key flagship technology-enabled initiatives including: Yoma (under the Generation Unlimited), the social protection HOPE MIS, U-Report, to support the government and partners in scaling-up programmes with global public goods and innovative approaches to reach children, adolescents and women. In addition, the new MCPD 2022-2026 will promote the development of digitized household surveys (e.g. MICS Plus, building on innovations in data collection introduced due to the COVID-19 pandemic).

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it increasingly clear that digital transformation is key to build back better. UNICEF’s long-term commitment to digital systems strengthening, innovation and effective technology-supported programming is clearly stipulated in its global and regional strategies.

Purpose of the Job:

Under the overall guidance of the Deputy Representative, the T4D Officer works closely with sectoral programme Heads of Section and provides professional, technical, operational and administrative support in the identification, assessment, and integration of T4D and ICT into UNICEF programming. The T4D Officer is responsible for coordinating and facilitating the mainstreaming effort, and for strengthening internal capacity to lead and support Technology for Development (T4D) related projects, identifying and engaging with key partners, identifying reusable and replicable technical building blocks and maximizing potential for T4D scale-up and roll-out. This includes:

• Support the development, coordination, and monitoring of T4D and innovations, and will provide ongoing technical support to each programme team in the design and implementation of their respective Innovation flagship initiatives (including Giga, Generation Unlimited/Yoma).
• Support the development, implementation/pilot/scale-up of innovations initiatives.
• Support the identification, assessment, and integration of ICTs into UNICEF programming;
• Strengthen internal capacity to lead and support T4D and innovation related projects and interventions;
• Identify and engage with key partners, identifying reusable and replicable technical building blocks and maximizing potential for T4D and innovation scale-up and rollout.
• Liaise with a wide variety of stakeholders including UNICEF HQ ICTD, UNICEF Office of Innovation, UNICEF HQ, Regional and Country Programme colleagues and various external partners at the programme and operations support level.

The T4D Officer is directly supervised by the Deputy Representative but works closely with Programme and ICT staff and in close liaison with the Latin Americas and Caribbean Regional Office (LACRO) T4D, the ICT Division’s Digital Center of Excellence central ICT Division and UNICEF Office of Innovation where applicable. The position is based in Barbados.

Key Functions, Accountabilities and Related Duties/Tasks:

Policy and Strategic Development

• Digital Development and Technology Innovation Strategy. Support implementation of the strategy for digital technology and innovation for the country office; bring visibility to T4D gaps, opportunities and scale-up the strategy in support of CO priorities.
• Participation in programme and management processes. Work closely with PME to integrate digital development and technology innovation into the programme lifecycle. Align with programme priorities (AWP, RWP etc.) and actively participate in programme meetings (PCM, etc).
• Leadership and Quality Assurance. Help monitor development and quality assurance during planning and deployment of T4D initiatives; participate in establishing and maintaining standards, documentation and support mechanisms for T4D.

• Convene and guide compliance with T4D best practices. Participate in CO T4D Governance Committee and support compliance of T4D initiatives with the Principles for Digital Development (http://digitalprinciples.org/) and UNICEF T4D best practices.

  Technical Assistance

• Business Relationship Management. Liaise with regional office to manage Business and Programme Relationship services to define high-level requirements; document and match requirements and guide the design, development and deployment of appropriate T4D solutions.

• Portfolio Coordination. Work closely with regional office in deploying a portfolio approach, adapting common solutions prioritized for UNICEF programming (e.g. Digital Public Goods).
• Support and assist design of T4D interventions. Provide support and technical assistance to the Country Office in the identification, selection, concept design, deployment, and sustainability of T4D interventions to address bottlenecks towards the achievement of programme results.
• Identify and assess new T4D innovations. Assist programme sections to identify and assess new T4D initiatives, or new phases of on-going initiatives, with immediate potential to improve UNICEF programming.
• Solution procurement and evaluation. Assist the review of technical solutions to ensure UNICEF standards are followed; contribute to project management processes, generation and review of terms of reference and vendor selection.
• Deployment advice and support. Assist with the implementation of digital technology initiatives. Including technical oversight, troubleshooting and the documentation of challenges and resolutions.

• Design thinking. Support human/user-centered design methods to enable user-acceptance testing, evaluation, documentation and analysis.

  Partnerships

• Engage and maintain partnerships and networks. Support the development of partnerships and networks with local solution providers, innovators, NGOs, the private sector, local media and academia to build and provide a space to nurture and test new and innovative technologies and build local capacity.

• Advocacy and communications. Participate and support country office representation in external, inter-agency or partner forums on Digital Development and Technology Innovation.
• Proposal and partnership development. Help identify opportunities for resource mobilization and new partnerships and assist proposal and partnership development efforts.
• Provide advice and support to programme partners. Provide inputs to technical and operational support to a wide range of stakeholders and partners on UNICEF policies, practices, standards and norms on technology for development.
• Standards and procedures for ownership. Work with stakeholders to help develop standards, procedures and partnerships for T4D interventions and their transition to relevant Government and Civil Society Institutions.
• Transfer and skill-sharing for programme partners. Help maintain partnerships with government counterparts and national stakeholders through active sharing and transfer of knowledge, skills and tools to foster and facilitate technology-enabled programming.
• Document localized partners and profiles. Contribute updates to a catalogue of country specific T4D partners and their profiles/areas of engagement to promote and enhance UNICEF goals for outcomes for children through the use of Technology for Development.

Knowledge Management

• Share lessons learned. Help identify, capture, synthesize and share lessons learned from T4D for integration into broader knowledge development planning, advocacy and communication efforts.
• Landscape mapping. Maintain an inventory of Technology and Innovation interventions, assets, resources and networks.
• Monitoring, evaluation and learning. Work with PME to ensure documentation and clear monitoring and evaluation mechanisms for innovation and T4D projects including baseline data collection, on-going monitoring, as well as first phase data collection and analysis.

• Contribute to Peer Support Networks. Contribute and share to regional and global digital development and technology innovation networks and activities.

  Capacity Building

• Data analysis for evidence generation. Build capacity of programme staff and partners in analyzing the large amounts of data generated through T4D initiatives including the use of data visualization techniques and analytics tools.

• Co-create appropriate solutions. Work directly with programme teams and partners to adapt technology and innovative solutions appropriate to the country programme.
• Provide training to stakeholders and end-users. Participate as resource person in capacity building initiatives to enhance the competencies, capacity and knowledge within the programmes on digital development; train UNICEF staff, partners, government counterparts and other end users in digital development and technology innovation.
• Build awareness around Innovation & Frontier Technology. Assist developing staff capabilities in appropriate use of frontier technology and innovations such as UAVs, wearables, IoTs, mobile money, blockchain etc.

Qualifications:

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• A University degree in information technology management, business administration, international relations, community development or other related social science field.
• A minimum of two years of professional experience in information technology management and business operations in a large international organization and/or corporation is required.
• Experience in designing or deploying tools appropriate to low-bandwidth environments and/or with RapidPro, OpenSRP, DHIS2, ODK/Kobo and other digital public good technologies, and deploying, maintaining and rolling out these technologies is highly desirable.
• Practical experience in supporting training and operationalization of MIS.
• Experience in supporting the operationalization of digital learning platforms is desirable.
• Excellent computer literacy including Internet, PowerBI and Microsoft Office (Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access) necessary.
• Knowledge of the Caribbean context and challenges faced by its children and adolescents, particularly with reference to accessing digital services and platforms (e.g. online learning);
• Experience in a UN organization is an asset.
• Fluency in English is required.

Core Values:

UNICEF’s Core Values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust and Accountability (CRITA) underpin everything we do and how we do it. Get acquainted with Our Values Charter: https://uni.cf/UNICEFValues

Competencies:

The UNICEF competencies required for this post are:

• Demonstrates Self Awareness and Ethical Awareness (1)
• Works Collaboratively with others (1)
• Builds and Maintains Partnerships (1)
• Innovates and Embraces Change (1)
• Thinks and Acts Strategically (1)
• Drive to achieve impactful results (1)
• Manages ambiguity and complexity (1)

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.

We offer a wide range of benefits to our staff, including paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. UNICEF strongly encourages the use of flexible working arrangements.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks:

This is a National Officer position and is therefore only available to nationals of Barbados

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

UNICEF reserves the right to make additional assessment of the pre-selected candidates, if needed.

UNICEF appointments are subject to medical clearance. Issuance of a visa by the host country of the duty station, which will be facilitated by UNICEF, is required for IP positions. Appointments may also be subject to inoculation (vaccination) requirements, including against SARS-CoV-2 (COVID). Government employees that are considered for employment with UNICEF are normally required to resign from their government before taking up an assignment with UNICEF. UNICEF reserves the right to withdraw an offer of appointment, without compensation, if a visa or medical clearance is not obtained, or necessary inoculation requirements are not met, within a reasonable period for any reason.